This book presents a broad scope of global contemporary art projects, establishing a new philosophical framework to understand and evaluate the new art practice known as place-asmedium.
This new category of art practice creates artworks that deepen our belonging to place by asking us to think through them together. This book shows how placeasmedium art reshapes the ground of thinking by offering a new reading of the work of Alfredo Jaar through the theories of Jacques Ranciere, Gianni Vattimo, and Martin Heidegger. An in-depth analysis of Carolyn Christov-Bakargievs 2012 international art exhibition dOCUMENTA (13) focuses on the temporal and spatial dimensions of thinking through place. This book advocates for shared authorship exemplified in artworks by Theaster Gates and John Preus that use repair and renovation to rebuild communities, and provides a model for ecological thinking in a case study of The Swamp School by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas. Additionally, this book includes a Coda for PlaceAsMedium as a practical guide for artists to think through place.
This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, and philosophy.
INTRODUCTION: Place-as-Medium: An Introduction
1. Thinking through
place: on Alfredo Jaar
2. Boundaries of place in Alfredo Jaars public
interventions
3. The play of places in Carolyn Christov-Bakargievs dOCUMENTA
(13)
4. Place-as-medium and the question of hospitality5. Towards a shared
authorship of place
6. The Swamp School and the Promise of Place-as-Medium as
Ecological Thinking APPENDIX: CODA for Place-as-Medium
Katherine Paige Farrington is an artistphilosopher and currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at Montserrat College of Art and Affiliated Faculty at Emerson College. Her artworks include Future Monument to the Trees of the Public Garden (2024), part of a multiyear public art initiative UnMonument sponsored by the City of Bostons Mayors Office of Arts and Culture and supported by the Mellon Foundation. Her art collective, Ocean School Collective (OSC), was selected for the 2025 Goetemann Environmental Artist Residency at the Ocean Alliance in Gloucester, Massachusetts by the Rocky Neck Art Colony.